Paradoxes of Catholicism eBook

Certainly it is an inexplicable state, since both
the ordinary aids to our will—­our understanding
and our emotion—­are, by the very nature
of the case, useless to it. Our heart revolts
from that dereliction and our understanding fails
to comprehend the reasons for it. Yet we acquiesce,
or at least perceive that we ought to do so; and that
by doing so—­by ceasing, that is, to grasp
God’s Presence any longer—­we find
it as never before. We leave God in order to
find Him.

(2) The second state is that in which we find ourselves
when not only do all consolations leave us, but the
very grip of intelligent faith goes too; when the
very reasons for faithfulness appear to vanish.
It is an incalculably more bitter trial, and soul
after soul fails under it and must be comforted again
by God in less august ways or perish altogether.
And yet this is not the extremest pitch even of human
desolation.

(3) For there is a third of which the saints tell
us in broken words and images....

III. Our final point, for application to ourselves,
is that dereliction in some form or another is as
much a stage in spiritual progress as autumn and winter
are seasons of the year. The beginners have to
suffer one degree, the illuminated another, and those
that have approached a real Union with God a third.
But all must suffer it, and each in his own degree,
or progress is impossible.

Let us take courage therefore and face it, in the
light of this Word. For, as we can sanctify bodily
pain by the memory of the nails, so too can we sanctify
spiritual pain by the memory of this darkness.
If He Who never left the Father’s side
can suffer this in an unique and supreme sense, how
much more should we be content to suffer it in lower
degrees, who have so continually, since we came to
the age of reason, been leaving not His side only,
but His very house.

THE FIFTH WORD

I thirst.

Our Lord continues to reveal His own condition, since
He, after all, is the key to all Humanity. If
we understand anything of Him, simultaneously we shall
understand ourselves far better.

He has shown us that He can truly be deprived of spiritual
consolation; and the value of this deprivation; now
He shows us the value of bodily deprivation also.
And the Paradox for our consideration is that the
Source of all can lose all; that the Creator needs
His creation; that He Who offers us the water springing
up into Life Eternal can lack the water of human
life—­the simplest element of all. In
His Divine Dereliction He yet continues to be Human.

I. It is very usual, under this Word, to meditate
on Christ’s thirst for souls; and this is, of
course, a legitimate thought, since it is true that
His whole Being, and not merely one part of it, longed
and panted on the Cross for every object of His desire.
Certainly He desired souls! When does He not?